Images & Wax

In getting the new themes plugin [1] to work for Firedrop2, we needed to update an image displayed on a panel. (We use the Wax GUI toolkit.) At first it didn't work, at least not on Windoze.

The answer (of course!) was to remove the old image object before adding the new one. Lest this be of interest to anyone else, the following code will display images from a subdirectory (called images). To display a new image, press the "update" button.

Look in my Toolbox

The last time I had to re-install windows remembering all the programs I needed was a nightmare.

I've put together a list of all the programs and utilities that I use regularly. This list serves two purposes. First I hope it is either useful, interesting
or provocative. Second, it is a place for me to keep a list of all the
programs I use.

Mobile VoIP

VoIP really is about mobility. This article is about using Wi-Fi enabled devices capable of Voice Over IP. It provides a mini tutorial on how to install four VoIP applications on Linux, Apple Mac or Windows operating systems.

Note

Oh and by the way, my insomnia has caused a 'possibly interesting' blog entry about two factoids from my childhood, over in my Personal Blog.

It doesn't deserve an entry here, but it's kind-of-almost-techie, so I thought I would mention it.

Haloscan Comments

The major advantage of Haloscan is that it is very easy to integrate with Firedrop2 (or any other blog system for that matter). I also get very few spam comments.

Up until recently I thought that the major downside was that comments only lasted a few months. Stewart Midwinter recently pointed out to me that for only $12 you can upgrade your account which has all sorts of benefits. (Including email notification of comments and the ability to customize the comments pages). Upgrading even brings previously deceased comments back from the dead.

I'm still vaguely looking for a solution I can run on my server (that doesn't use PHP and is easy to run behind lighttpd).

This is because Haloscan still has the following limitations :

Comments are included via a javascript link, which means they aren't crawled by search engines [1]

The lines here are split to fit on the page: rejoin them to make it work.

I'm still hoping to a new release out real soon, hopefully tomorrow. The new release will include a Themes Plugin created by Stewart Midwinter. This has several pre-created (and damn fine looking) styles for new blogs. There are also separate RSS feeds generated for each category, contributed by Davy Mitchell.

Shortly after this will be another release, hopefully including a podcast plugin created by Ron Stephens and myself, blog statistics by Davy Mitchell [1], and possibly a tagging plugin by Davy Mitchell and myself.

It looks like both Shedskin and PyPy are scarily close to becoming useful projects.

Slightly worrying is the project to integrate cheesecake with the cheeseshop. This seems to add extra hoops for package creators to jump through. (On top of the setuptools overhead we're already acquiring.) For example, from a naive reading, it looks like packages that use doctests rather than unittests will be penalised.

Update

The cheesecake team assure me that doctests will be supported. I should have guessed.

Wireless Fun

This gives me wireless networking and as a router, is a first step to a home network. But how much of a nightmare would it be to get it working ?

Amazingly it worked first time. NTL, for all their administrative incompetence, make it very easy to connect via a router and setting up the Linksys device (including encrypting and protecting the wireless network) was extremely easy. Phew.

Learning Python

ResolverSystems is looking to hire a senior developer. The main qualification is the ability of the candidate to fit in with our development methodology.

Previous knowledge of Python is not a requirement. Why not ? Well, the other developers (none of whom used Python prior to this project, other than me of course) have found Python so straightforward that they think any competent programmer can learn Python in a matter of days.

Firedrop On the Move

There are now two more developers actively working on Firedrop2, the blog program. There ought to be several new plugins and other improvements soon.